THERE IS NO SCIENCE BEHIND THIS: Cuomo’s New Ban On Indoor Dining In NYC Is Abject Madness.

On Wednesday, I wrote a column in the New York Post urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo to release contact tracing data on the spread of the Chinese virus in New York restaurants before closing them down. My logic was that the owners of these establishments, their employees, and their patrons deserved to see the evidence that proves that indoor dining is a major driver of virus spread.

On Friday, the governor released that data. It does not show that restaurants are a major driver; it shows they accounted for 1.4 percent of spread. And yet, in a move that defies even the basic tenets of common sense, Emperor Cuomo is closing down indoor dining anyway.

In mid-December, when it is too cold to eat outside and a week before a Christmas, this order will directly lead to thousands of more unemployed New Yorkers.

This decision is insane. It is also cruel and arbitrary. For two months Gotham’s restaurants have done everything asked of them: created outdoor dining areas, bought heaters, run at 25 percent capacity, had customers fill out tracing forms, and enforced masks. And guess what? It looks like it worked. Fewer than 2 in 100 infections can be traced back to eateries. So why are they now being punished? . . .

There is no excuse for this decision. Not only is the infection rate for restaurants and bars a meager 1.4 percent, the rate for households is 74 percent.

So let me posit a simple question. Now that friends are to be banned from sharing time together at a restaurant or pub, where will they gather? Oh, right, in households. Brilliant, governor, just brilliant. Don’t let us go where almost no one gets COVID, but shove us into the places where almost everyone does.

Tar. Feathers.